My Infant Reflux Journey

I have been thinking for a long time that I need to write this story. It is the story of my infant reflux journey with my daughter.

I have been dreading writing it for a couple of reasons. For one thing, it’s not a pleasant topic. Although I overall have beautiful memories of my daughter’s first year, there are some difficult memories that I just don’t feel like reliving.

Another reason is that I have a hard time putting my infant reflux journey into words because I have often struggled to understand it in the first place.

But I know it is only fair that I share my story for the sake of other mamas who are struggling along their own infant reflux journey. I know what is like to just need the encouragement of knowing your situation is not unique.

So here we go …. This is the story of my infant reflux journey.

Please note that I am not a medical professional and nothing in this post should be taken as medical advice. Please speak with your baby’s pediatrician about any acid reflux concerns you have

My Infant Reflux Journey Begins

As I gingerly lifted myself out of my hospital bed to hurry to my crying newborn daughter’s clear plastic box of a bed, my only thought was of how desperately I wanted to comfort my precious little baby.

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She had awoken crying and choking, calming down only once I held her upright on my lap, her little chest and head resting against one hand as I gently rubbed her back with the other.

She was only hours old and I had already done this numerous times throughout the night – about every hour.

Read my natural hospital birth story here!

I didn’t know at the time exactly what was causing her distress. It must have been motherly instinct that led me to hold her in this position, which was exactly what she needed.

This is surprising because, in the following days, she began to nurse constantly and she would only sleep well while nursing and/or being held. We would not understand the reason for this for a couple more weeks.

As I think back now, I remember with astonishment that I could not get her to nurse throughout the entire night because she was so sleepy.

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At her two week appointment, I described to my daughter’s pediatrician a disconcerting experience I had had with my infant the night before.

I had tried to unlatch my daughter after an hour long nursing session so that I could go to bed. However, the unlatching caused my daughter to start screaming and spitting up large amounts of milk. She would not calm down until I nursed her again.

The doctor explained that most babies are born with reflux and different babies cope with it in different ways. He told me that sucking (nursing) was the only way my daughter knew how to swallow to combat the refluxed liquid coming up her throat.

Find out why I chose not to medicate my baby’s infant reflux in this post.

This was the moment I began to more clearly understand my daughter’s needs. It was also comforting to know that her constant desire to nurse was not a result of low milk supply or an inability of hers to sufficiently extract milk.

However, as I would learn in the coming months, this was far from a simple answer to a simple problem.

The Trials of My Infant Reflux Journey

Every child is unique in many ways and this uniqueness also applies to health conditions. There are bound to be different difficulties experienced by each baby suffering with infant reflux.

But there are some common issues that often arise in reflux babies. Some of my experiences may be a struggle for another mama who needs to know she’s not alone, and that is why I want to share them.

On the severity spectrum of infant reflux, my daughter is somewhere in the middle. It has interfered with her life, particularly when she was an infant. But, fortunately, it has never hindered her nursing or her growth.

While I am grateful her development and growth have not suffered as a result of the reflux, we have still both had some challenges to contend with throughout our infant reflux journey.

Sleep

Reflux babies don’t sleep well. As I already mentioned, reflux has hindered my daughter’s ability to sleep well unless she nurses frequently throughout her sleep. This quickly led to the necessity of my baby sleeping with me.

While co-sleeping is advertised by some as the best way for your new baby to sleep, for me, it was simply the only way my baby would sleep.

For a long time, I was embarrassed by this sleep situation. Sometimes, I still am simply because it is an unusual thing to do in the American culture.

But everything I read about babies with reflux and everything in my heart told me not to sleep train my child.

Find out why not every child should be sleep trained in this post.

We got decent sleep by sharing a bed (actually, a recliner), although there were still some rough nights. There were often times when I had to sit on my exercise ball many times throughout the night, bouncing and nursing my daughter to soothe her reflux enough for her to fall and stay asleep.

It seemed that the more intense the movement was, the more it soothed her. Sometimes my thighs were on fire trying to bounce her as high as possible while controlling my movements to be gentle enough not to jostle her too much.

There was even a day when I had to literally jog around the nursery to get my tired, uncomfortable, screaming daughter to sleep.

Other times she could sleep without much bouncing, but she would be restless all night, her belly full of gas that never seemed to end.

Read about the real cause behind infant reflux here!

The only thing I could do to keep her asleep was switch nursing sides whenever she started to sit up. The change in position alleviated her discomfort enough for her to sleep for another hour, half hour, or fifteen minutes.

Car Rides

From the very first car ride of her life coming home from the hospital, my daughter has hated being in her carseat. Going out was literally impossible most of the time without making my poor baby absolutely miserable.

My rare trips out of the house usually consisted of multiple nursing sessions and one or more stops somewhere along the road to comfort my hysterical little baby.

Read more about the difficulty of getting out of the house with a reflux baby here.

I have painful memories of listening to my baby scream and choke as I drove, often stopping in less than ideal locations to climb into the backseat to nurse her.

I have even more painful memories of listening to her agonized cries and choosing not to stop because we were five minutes from home or because I had already stopped once or twice. I still regret not stopping during some of those car rides.

The reclining position of infant car seats just isn’t friendly to infant reflux.

Separation

Because nursing was my daughter’s favorite way of being comforted and because she needed frequent comforting due to her reflux, she could not go without nursing for longer than 45 minutes as a young baby and a couple hours as an older baby.

I did not fully understand this at first. once she passed 6 months, I waited endlessly for her nursing sessions to decrease in frequency and length as her intake of solids increased,. But she continued to nurse almost as much as she had as a newborn.

Because of this frequent nursing, combined with her severe separation anxiety, I could not be away from her for more than a few minutes when she was younger.

I clearly remember in those early days how showers were few and far between because I could rarely set my baby down without her crying.

Even when my husband was home, I would have to nurse her right before getting in the shower. By the time I was stepping out of the tub 10-15 minutes later, my husband was often bringing her to me screaming and wanting to nurse again.

Overall, I didn’t mind this too much and was happy to meet my baby’s needs. But it did make it difficult to take care of my own needs.

Cooking and Cleaning

Reflux babies often want to be held constantly. Consequently, as a reflux baby mama, I had to either hold (and usually nurse) my baby while doing the cooking and cleaning … Or not do any cooking and cleaning.

For my first 2-3 months postpartum, I really didn’t do anything beyond sitting on the couch nursing or walking through the house or bouncing on my exercise ball to keep my daughter comfortable.

Discover 10 things you can easily do postpartum here!

Once my husband gently suggested I find a healthy balance between comforting my daughter and cooking a meal once in a while, I realized I had to figure out a way to cook so my poor husband wouldn’t starve.

I had managed to bake while holding my daughter, but chopping veggies and stirring hot pots was considerably harder to do with a tiny human in my arms.

I don’t really remember how I dealt with this when she was less than 5 months old. I do remember taking advantage of a visiting friend’s generous offer to help by letting her hold and bounce my daughter for a few minutes while I scrambled to throw a meal together before she started crying.

Once she was roughly 5 months old, we started putting her in a bouncy. This kept her in a comfortable upright position while offering entertaining toys for her to look at.

This was a really helpful solution that allowed me to get something done now and then while giving my arms a break.

Fortunately, the older she got, the more she was okay with being put down to explore the world on her own, despite her relentless battle with reflux.

The Length of My Infant Reflux Journey

As with severity, the length of time each baby struggles with infant reflux can vary. It is an unfortunate fact that some (although not many) babies will have reflux their whole life.

I was blissfully unaware of this possibility in the beginning and quickly dismissed it as unlikely later on.

The doctor assured me at each of my daughter’s well-child check-ups that my daughter would likely outgrow her reflux soon.

Based on the statistics, there was a good chance she would “outgrow” it by 3 months of age. If not, then she would probably be reflux-free by 6 months of age.

If not, then she most likely would be rid of it by 9 months of age. If not, then it was 95% certain that she would not have reflux by her first birthday.

My hope was renewed at each of her check-ups, thinking she still had time before her condition would be considered chronic. But at every milestone, she continued to struggle with the reflux.

By the time she turned a year old, I knew the reflux wasn’t going anywhere for a while, if ever.

This might sound depressing – there were moments when it was incredibly discouraging – but as she grew into a toddler, she began to deal with the reflux much better than she did as a baby.

She is now 21 months old and still has reflux. However, she is not nearly as miserable as she used to be. Overall, she is just a happy little girl, and I no longer anxiously await a dramatic change.

I still hope she will one day be free from this frequent discomfort. But, although she does experience particularly painful flare-ups occasionally, I am grateful that it no longer seems to negatively impact the quality of her life on a regular basis.

What is Your Infant Reflux Story?

If you read this post, you most likely have some sort of experience with infant reflux. I would love to hear what your experience has been.

Please share your infant reflux story in the comments and don’t forget to pin this post and share it on Facebook to encourage other baby reflux mamas on their own journey.

If you need ideas on how to positively change or cope with infant reflux, check out this post on my top 3 infant reflux soothing technique or this post on surviving infant reflux over at Poms 2 Moms.